I feel I must be radically honest here: It became a whole thing, this redesign/rethink of the site which you see today. Like a Michael Douglas in The Wonder Boys type of thing, like a Withnail and I and the dishes thing, like a Billy Liar never getting on the train type of thing.
All of which (if you haven’t seen any of those movies) is to say: There was fear, there was ambivalence, there were further complications.
And then, like you do, you get over it. You make moves. And so Philebrity stands before you today, lean and light. You can look at it on your phone and not want to harm me personally anymore. There’s a new events calendar. (Holy hell, we even started an Instagram account.) Meanwhile, the new posts are meant for enjoyment, as opposed to the edification of a news cycle I don’t know if any of us even believe in anymore. I have instituted a very real “no reblogs ever” policy. We have moved to all original content. We’ll even be publishing essays, fiction and poetry when it feels right. This week, we’ll also be reaching out for a whole new crew of semi-regular contributors. (We already have a wish list going, but if you’d like to submit something, do please go ahead and send your pitch to tips@philebrity.com.)
But about that leanness I just mentioned: There is nothing wrong with your computer, as you navigate this site, or mine. WE HAVE DITCHED THE ARCHIVES! Which to you may be like, “What?” But to us? TOTAL LIBERATION.
An explainer:
One of the most gnarly things about the redesign was the prospect of migrating 12 years of Wordpress posts to whatever the new site would be. But after a while, I got to thinking:
- I have not been happy with this site's tone and content for at least 3 years.
- Most of those old posts were kinda designed to be irrelevant the next day anyway. Digital fishwrap, if you will, most of which was some fucked up game of catch-up with other media orgs that we were never win anyway.
So guess what: Ditch 'em! We'll pull the greatest hits here and there outta the archives and repost 'em when we feel like it. In the meantime, and I think (read: hope) the new posts will be more and more reflecting this, we've got a whole conceptual shift on our hands: WE HAVE LIBERATED OURSELVES FROM "INTERNET NEWS."
And what that means is, we got tired of posting the same shit as everybody else (even if it did have our spin).
From here on out, we have a new rule: If this is something that someone would not conceivably want to read 10, 20 years down the line, fuck it. We're not posting it.
Can you dig it?
Yours always in the City of Brotherly Love & Sisterly Affection,
Joey Sweeney
Editor & Publisher
Philebrity.com
